Pendergast looked at him. “And you haven’t told me her old one.”
The man frowned, sitting up again, pugnacity flaring in his rheumy eyes.
“Now it’s your turn to go first,” said Pendergast.
Quincy’s white knuckles gripped his chair. Coldmoon could see him struggling. “Alicia Rime,” he finally said.
“Her name now is Felicity Winthrop Frost. The hotel she owns in Savannah is called the Chandler House. An excellent establishment. And she is a most formidable woman, if a bit frail — and quite lonely.”
After a moment, Quincy nodded. “No doubt.”
Pendergast rose, followed by Coldmoon. He began to turn toward the door. Then he stopped. “One other thing,” he said. “Is it possible she used this mysterious instrument you mentioned to pay off your mortgage and cover your medical school tuition?”
“I’ve got no idea,” Quincy said. “I’ve said too much already. I think it’s time for you to leave — right now.”
That was it. Coldmoon followed Pendergast out of the farmhouse, down the steps, and back to the waiting vehicle. And the whole time, Dr. Quincy stood on the steps in his long underwear, silent and motionless, a look of infinite sorrow on his lined face.
44
Gannon heard a voice raised in complaint, as she’d known she would eventually, from the end of the hall where Betts was reviewing the daily rushes. She already had a good idea of what he was going to say, but she’d learned it was better to let him mansplain “his” ideas to her rather than come up with them independently and try to sell them to him.
“Gannon?” she heard. “Gannon! You around?”
She headed down the hall and into the editing room. Moller was in the chair next to Betts, a dour presence.
“Come in,” Betts said, gesturing. “Take a look.”
She came in and stood behind them. On the computer screen was the last of the footage from the previous day.
“This is great,” Betts said. “Love your angles. You really nailed it.”
Gannon couldn’t help but blush. Normally, Betts was stingy with his compliments.
“Moller, you look good, too. Right? I hope you’re happy.”
Moller bowed his head in grave affirmation. He never looked happy, but that, Gannon realized, was part of his shtick.
“But here’s the thing,” Betts went on. “We’ve got all this footage of Moller, the crazy mob scene, the press — all great stuff. But you know what we don’t have?”
She knew perfectly well, but she said, “No.”
“We don’t have creepy footage in a lonely cemetery. We need atmospherics. And we need to see Moller all alone, checking out some haunted place. We can’t get that in broad daylight with a big crowd around. You know what I mean?”
“I agree.”
“Good. Now look at this, here.” He pressed a button and some of Pavel’s Steadicam footage started rolling on the screen, showing the cops working the crime scene among unkempt tombs.
He paused the video. “There. You see, behind them, back through all that overgrowth? I was there. You can just barely see it, but there’s more graves. And a mausoleum, with a door partway open. Hard to tell, but it looks like it’s coming off its hinges. Maybe we can get in, film inside.”
“I see that.”
“Good. That’s where we need to shoot. We’ll bring some lights with filters, a fog machine, do it up good. See if we can’t register some more evil, I mean real evil, like the vampire himself — if you get my drift.”
Moller’s dour look deepened. “But that area of overgrown tombs is not where the young man was abducted. It is not where I registered a strong supernatural presence.”
“That doesn’t matter. I mean, it does matter — but this is a cemetery, for Chrissakes. There’re ghosts all around, right? And we need to get some good B-roll in the abandoned cemetery, after dark. That’s the perfect spot to do it. Gannon here will get the fogger going, generate some mist. With low, raking lighting, it’s going to look super. Right, Gannon?”
“Absolutely.”
“What do you say, Gerhard?”
“I am willing to try. When do you plan to make this excursion?”
“When? As soon as the sun sets, of course.”
45
As they drove away from the farm and into the inky maze of mountains, Coldmoon turned to Pendergast. “That was interesting.”
“What I found most curious was the injury,” said Pendergast.
“Broken leg? Why is that?”
“Think about it. What was she doing way out there, in the middle of nowhere, all alone, with a broken leg?”
“Maybe she fell off a mountain.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not...” Pendergast slowed the car at a fork — again, unmarked — and after a moment chose the left-hand route. “What was your opinion of the fellow?”
“A lost soul. Eighty-plus years old and the poor guy’s still pining for that woman, never gotten over her. She must’ve been quite the firecracker in her day.”
They drove on in silence before turning onto Route 141 — another backwoods road, but at least one that seemed more traveled. Half an hour later, they merged onto I-84 in the direction of Portland. Coldmoon felt himself relax at the wide expanse of highway ahead, and the dark forbidding mountains beginning to recede in the rearview mirror.
“So,” Coldmoon said. “I’m still not clear how you found that guy, to be honest, or what it has to do with the murders.”
“I explained as little as possible back in Savannah, because I wanted you to be a check on any assumptions or hasty conclusions I might have made. I knew that Frost had found her new identity in this region of Washington State — in the cemetery in Puyallup. Given that the book Constance examined appeared to be a parting gift from her lover, it seemed a safe assumption that she’d lived in the area — and that was when I realized Berry Patch was not just some private trysting spot, but a town. Or, given its minuscule population, what is known in Washington State as a ‘populated place.’”
“I didn’t see any town at all.”
“A scattering of houses and a post office. Population eighty-five.”
“Sounds like something out of Li’l Abner,” Coldmoon said.
“The small population was, for me at least, a blessing: there proved to be only one resident with the initials Z.Q.”
“So. You think the old guy is going to look her up?”
“I imagine a titanic struggle is going on in his mind about that very question.”
“But that doesn’t really answer my basic question: how does this connect to the murders? You didn’t shed much light on that back in Savannah, either.”
“Consider the following facts: Frost was the person most intimate with Ellerby; they had an altercation two days before he was murdered; she has refused to help the police; there is gossip in the hotel — admittedly absurd — about her being a vampire; she may not be as weak as she seems; the inscription in the book suggests she once committed a crime; and finally, there’s the fact that she assumed a stolen identity. While none of this is dispositive, my intuition tells me she must be connected to the murders in some way.”
“And are you any closer to figuring that way out?”
Pendergast said nothing.
“So where to now? I see we’re not heading back to the airport.”
“Just one more stop, my friend,” said Pendergast, putting on his turn signal and preparing to exit the freeway. “I promise you, we’ll soon be boarding our flight back to Atlanta, in time for a late dinner at our hotel.”
They headed for the off-ramp to some little town on the outskirts of Portland called Corbett. “So what are we doing here?” Coldmoon asked.
“The postmaster who serviced Berry Patch in the early seventies has been dead for twenty years. His wife helped him until he retired. She then remarried, was widowed a second time, and now lives at the Riverview Retirement Home here.” He paused. “I’m confident that Berry Patch — like other secluded hamlets, Spoon River included — thrives, or at least thrived, on local gossip.”